Solar Priority Mode not ignoring shore power to prioritize use of solar on a boat

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

Have a boat that spends a lot of time pierside in a marina on shorepower. One of my holy grails has been to use solar to keep the batteries charged (even if battery level goes down at night) and only use shore power as necessary since it is expensive and solar is free. When at sea or at anchor, we have gone weeks without having to run the engines to recharge the batteries, so was thrilled to discover that solar-wind priority is a feature now available for my Quattro inverter. Have enabled it per the (simple) manual associated with that feature, but it is simply not working correctly. The quattro goes through bulk and absorption modes before entering and staying in ‘float’ mode, but it keeps providing power to the batteries/DC system whether solar is available or not and (at night, when solar goes to nothing) maintains the batteries at 100%.

System details:

• 1800 Ah of 12V lithium batteries (bank is 18 100Ah Dragonfly (Battleborn) Lithium batteries. They do not have a comms connection and do not talk to the system.
• BMV-712 Battery Monitor with a Shunt on the house battery bank
• Quattro 12/5000 Inverter charger
• 3 Solar smart MPPT controllers controlling three different parts of the solar array
• Shore power at AC1 in to the. Quattro at 120V/60Hz.

My specific settings for the Quattro are as follows:

DVCC is turned on with Shared Current Sense and Shared Voltage Sense switches on. The three Solar MPPTs are connected to a smartbus with the BMV, and obviously the Quattro is talking to the BMV and Color GX device via the VEBus.

The solar controllers have a Battery Absorption and Float settings .1V higher than the Quattro (this is a previous setting from before the solar priority feature was added to the Quattro in an attempt to try and have the battery pull more from solar than shore power when solar was available).

The BMV has the following settings:

The Color GX appears to show that Solar Priority has been enabled. Overview page shows the solar and wind logo over the battery with an orange stripe at left and two up arrows, and the Quattro page now shows the "Charging the Battery to 100%) option…but status appears to be stuck at “in progress”.

My problem is that the BMV (and the Quattro) both show the battery at 100%, but the “charging battery to 100%” appears to be permanently stuck as “in progress”…even after a 6 hour absorption charge where it then reverts to “float”. During daylight hours, the battery is charged by both solar and shore power with solar covering a big percentage. At night solar goes to zero and shore power load goes up…and the battery stays at 100% and never goes down.

My expected behavior is that shore power will only feed the AC loads (AC1 Out) and solar covers the Battery charge and DC loads. At night the battery keeps feeding DC loads and the battery charge level drops. After 7 days, if the battery didn’t make it back to 100%, the Quattro would use shore power to fully charge the battery to 100% and then things would start over again.

My belief is that for some reason the Quattro logics do not believe the battery is at 100% and thus it doesn’t go into sustain mode and keeps using shore power to charge the battery. This also keeps the "charge battery to 100% switch) for the Quattro in the Color GX to permanently say “in progress” and never get to the expected position where I could initiate an override charge to 100% if I wanted to (and as the manual and video describe).

My assumption is that there is a disconnect between the BMV and the Quattro over the state of the battery, leaving them to believe the battery is not at 100%. I am 99% certain that I have a voltage setting wrong somewhere (either charged voltage, float or absorption) somewhere in one of the devices. I am hoping for guidance on what I am doing wrong.

[M_Lange (Matthias Lange - DE)]

The “Solar & Wind Priority” is only for DC loads, AC loads will be powered from shore.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

I know. My point is that AC is still charging the DC battery and DC loads instead of letting solar do it and (at night) letting the battery level drop until it hits the 13.0V sustainment level where it will kick in. It is NOT doing that and instead is continually charging the DC battery/carrying DC loads and appears stuck in a charging the battery to 100% cycle.

I am NOT expecting solar priority to have shore not cover AC loads and understand those will always be covered by shore as AC passthru, but it is not dropping from covering DC loads.

[MiPaul (Paul Keberly)]

Seems odd that your Battery Monitor charged voltage would be lower than your charger float voltage. If you’ve been playing with settings, try a Restart VE.Buss System on the inverter product page. My MP works like your expected behavior.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

I’ll push the battery monitor charged voltage up and try a VEBuss system restart and see what it does.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

No change in behavior. Quattro went through absorption then back to float and it’s keeping batteries charged. I’m still thinking there is a switch somewhere making it think batteries are not fully charged based on the Quattro charge to 100%"in progress " flag…but I don’t know what turns that flag on.

[MiPaul (Paul Keberly)]

It looks like you have the battery monitor enabled. I’m pretty sure this is for VE.Bus battery monitors only, the BMV-712 is VE.Direct.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

I tried turning that off during troubleshooting but will turn it off again and see what happens.

Update - @MiPaul I disabled the Quattro battery monitor. NO apparent change in behaviour. One thing I didn’t mention in my original post. The Quattro has a digital multi-control installed (previous owner did that so he could regulate current in with the knob as well as switch the quattro on and off without removing the access panel on the boat it’s hidden behind. I don’t see anything in the manual, but is it possible the digital multi-control overrides the various settings on the quattro inhibiting it from leaving the “charging to 100% in progress” state? I know it inhibits some of the remote control settings for the boat via VRM or Remote VeConfigure…

[MiPaul (Paul Keberly)]

That’s odd, you try a VE bus reset after? Any firmware updates available?
Try unplugging the multi-control.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

I am on current firmware for all devices and have done a VE.bus reset. When I next get to boat I’ll try unplugging the multi-control and see if that makes a difference…

@MiPaul appreciate your advice and suggestions as I try to figure this out!

[lxonline (LX)]

@drklain

One small thing to change from battle borns own Instructions page… Maybe review the others

Charged voltage: 14.4V but note that this number should be about .1 or .2 volts below the charging voltage set in your charging device

The absorption time in your system is set to 6 hours.in ve config.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

@lxonline Thank you. I have the charged voltage set to 14.2 which is .2 volts below absorption charging voltage of 14.4. I have the absorption time set to 6 hours based on 20-30 minuted per battery and I have 18 100Ah batteries in the bank. Have debated pushing it to 9 hours but not sure that will make a difference since the batteries are definitely fully charged with 0 current going in to the batteries…

[lxonline (LX)]

So absorption is a no (or hardly any) current charge state, usually held at the 14.x voltage. The battery did drop to float, you mentioned that. So it mist have gone throughb the whole charg cycle its just the GX display thing that doesn’t seem to clear.

4. Operation

@drklain

stuck as “in progress”…even after a 6 hour absorption charge where it then reverts to “float”

If you hit the stop charging does it remove the red 100% issue?

How is the bank wired? Its a pretty decent sized one.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

@lxonline Exactly.

On the GX there is no stop charging option. The “charge to 100%” is stuck on “in progress”. Pushing it does nothing. That is part of what makes me think there is some setting somewhere tripping a flag on the GX or the Quattro. Only time I’ve seen a different option on the Quattro setting on the Color GX was when I enabled ESS to set up priority instead of using the “priority” advanced tab switch. But (as I understand it) I shouldn’t be using ESS to do this because my boat doesn’t (a) have an electric meter, (b) cannot feed back to the grid, and (c) the intent of the advanced priority option is for the boat use case. As it stands now I do not have any virtual switches or ESS enabled. I should mention that in Victron connect, I can’t do any actions on the Quattro because I have a Victron remote digital multi-control connected to it (previous owner used it to adjust current in to different levels depending upon shorepower limitations). I have NOT tried doing this with that disconnected but am beginning to think this may inhibit some of the quattro charging functions (priority, etc.) even though it makes no sense that it should do so…

The bank is wired in a ladder format (all batteries in parallel, negative off one end of the ladder, positive off the other. Shunt (not a smart shunt I believe) that feeds the BMV is right where negative comes off the battery bank.

[lxonline (LX)]

Usually ESS is not used because when the mobile install is disconnected the plug can be live.

To stop the charge to 100% there is an option under the inverter in the device list on the GX. There is a screenshot in the link above that shows it

@drklain

The bank is wired in a ladder format (all batteries in parallel, negative off one end of the ladder, positive off the other

Ok so you do definitely need the longer absorption to get the whole bank up to full definitely.

@drklain

mention that in Victron connect, I can’t do any actions on the Quattro

This is normal. Unless you have the mk3 attached and are specifically programming it. As the GX or dmc is the interface.

I don’t see how the dmc could affect the solar wind as it is really just an interface for the input control. I could be corrected i haven’t used one in a set up like that

[dwmarine]

you could try putting the shore power on AC in 2.

On the boats I have done, AC in 1 appears to force the batteries to 100% as its normally a genset input.

I have swapped the shorepower to Ac in 2 on both boats and things are working as expected.

[drklain (Dave Klain)]

@dwmarine that appears to be have been the issue. I spent all day at the boat and went through every possible software/charger setting and could not get it to work. I found one post in this forum about a different issue (https://communityarchive.victronenergy.com/questions/309134/problems-with-sustain-mode-quattros-and-dvccsmart.html) where he referenced that he was able to get into sustain mode by moving his shore power to the AC-2-In connection instead of AC-1-In. I did the same on my Quattro and sustain appeared and seems to be working correctly (it is night now and shore is doing passthrough to the minimal AC load while the battery is discharging to cover the DC loads). I also now have a “press to start” option on the “charge to 100%” line for the Quattro in the GX instead of the permanent “in progress” status. Selecting it starts charging and I then have a “press to stop” option in the menu. Interestingly enough, the “state of charge” reflects “–” for the Quattro while the BMV shows the correct state of charge for the house bank. I’m not sure if this is supposed to be that way or if I have yet another setting somewhere that drives that, but at least the system appears to be doing what I want it to.

I’ll monitor it for the next few days and then report back, but it seems to me that Victron assumes that boats/RVs will be configured with a Generator on AC1 and shore on AC2. The software appears to be set such that AC1 can never enter sustain as it is designed to fully charge the batteries and only AC2 can be used to provide sustain for priority solar, but nowhere in any of the manuals (including the priority solar) does it say that this is necessary. Many boats do not have a generator and it is natural to set up the shore power feeding into AC1, preventing people from using Solar priority.

I’m going to wait a bit before reporting my issue as “solved” but it would be nice if the Victron folks would comment on my theory and confirm it is correct. If so, the documentation on use of Solar Priority should have this as a note in required configuration…

[MiPaul (Paul Keberly)]

Good find. My RV Multiplus has only one AC input, with a transfer switch for shore/genset. A status input from a running genset will automagicly start a 100% charge. That aligns well with what you’re seeing.

[lxonline (LX)]

Generator support: The system will automatically detect that a generator is running and then charge at full power as usual. For Quattros, it requires the generator to be wired to the AC-in-1 input. In case of Multis with an external transfer switch wired in front of it, the GX device can be used to detect if the generator is active (with a digital input) and pass that information along to the Multi. When using a Digital Multi Control panel (DMC) and closing the generator select input terminals of the screw connector on the backside, the system will charge at full power also.

2. Details & Requirements - 2. Details & Requirements

The requirement for the generator being in ac2 is mentioned in the manual.

[MiPaul (Paul Keberly)]

@lxonline

The requirement for the generator being in ac2 is mentioned in the manual.

Genset goes to AC1 for the Quattro. Having shore on AC1 is what prevented the switch to Solar priority. A DMC input to charge 100% is a bonus.